Low-Power-Design Space Exploration Considering Process Variation Using Robust Optimization

Increasing levels of process variation in current process technologies make it extremely important that design and process decisions be made while considering their impact. This paper presents a convex-optimization-based approach to select values of supply voltages, threshold voltages, and oxide thicknesses to minimize power dissipation in a simplified abstraction of multi-Vdd/Vth/Tox CMOS designs while considering process variation. The authors use this probabilistic approach to perform optimization of different statistical parameters of power dissipation (e.g., mean or high percentile points) and quantify the impact of rising process variations on these power-minimization techniques